
Class. 
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EULOGY 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE NEW ENGLAND HISTOEIC- GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, 



BOSTON, MAY 3, 1865, 



RET. ELIAS :N^AS0^, 



MEMBER OF THE SOCIETT. 



" lie that hath the vantage ground to do good is an honest man." — Bacon. 



BOSTON: 

WILLIAM V. SPENCER, 

134 Washington Street. 

18 65. 



EULOGY 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 



DEirVERED BEFORE 



THE NEW ENGLAND HISTOEIC- GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, 



BOSTON, MAY 3, 1865, 



PvEY. ELIAS NASOj^, 



MEMnER OP TnE SOOIETT. 



lie that hath the vantage giouud to do good is an honest man." — Bacon. 



BOSTON: 

WILLIAM V. SPENCER, 

134 Washinoton Street. 

18 65. 



.N-2.^ 



Camftritigf |]rcsa. 
Dakin awd Metcalf. 



EULOGY. 



MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: 

We assemble again — and oh, how soon and sadly ! — to render our 
mournful tribute of respect to the illustrious dead. Our hearts are 
bowed and stricken at the judgment of Almighty God, who hath 
stretched forth his hand from the folds of eternity and taken to him- 
self the Chief Magistrate of this nation. 

Another great man has fallen, and the voice of lamentation and 
wailing resounds through every loyal city, village, and hamlet of 
this Union. The faces of the sons and daughters of Columbia are 
bathed in tributary tears, as when George Washington, father 
of his country, was translated from the arms of his compatriots to 
the skies. 

The mournful dirge in memory of our departed President is 
swelling as the sobbings of the melancholy ocean, and every 
demonstration which weeping sorrow can devise attests the depth 
and sincerity of the emotion which this bereaved nation now ex- 
periences. 

The long, slow-moving funereal trains, the sable robes and deco- 
rations, the flag depressed, private residences, pubhc edifices and 
sacred temples draped in the memorials of woe ; the tolling bell, 
the organ's deep and solemn peal, the soldiers' arms reversed and 
plaintive requiem ; the muffled drum-beats and the minute guns, 



the coronach of the Caledonian ; the " langsame trauerlied " of 
the tearful German ; the " Mourir pour la patrie " of the sympa- 
thetic Frenchman ; the simple-hearted lay of the Freedman, 
weeping sad and lonely, do most touchingly proclaim, as once the 
harps and voices of God's chosen people when they wept by " Ba- 
bel's willowy streams," the intensity of the nation's grief. 
^ Yes! God has suddenly struck the chords of the heart of this 
vast nation, and they tremble as when the forest bends beneath the 
blow of the dark autumnal tempest, or the ship quivers in every 
beam beneath the sudden stroke of the Euroclydon. 

Abraham Lincoln, the President of these United States, is dead ! 
Assassmated by the ruthless hand of a godless rebel ! Instantane- 
ously cut down, as the magnanimous Prince of Orange, in the 
prime and vigor of his manhood, just at the moment when the frui- 
tion of his hopes was about to be experienced ; — in cold blood, 
mercilessly murdered by the impitiable hand of a dastardly minion 
of treason ! 

Assassination of the good and great in power ; assault upon the 
chosen of the people, upon the supporter of the country's honor, 
the standard-bearer of the flag of civil freedom ; assassination of the 
chieftain and the saviour of the Republic, around whom the hearts 
of the millions clung as the tendrils of the vine around the tower- 
ing oak of the mountain ; assassination of the friend of the friend- 
less, of the oppressed, of you and of me ! Crime unheard-of in 
America ; crime, whose " deep damnation " treason's tongue itself 
must speak, its blood must seal. 

What sudden grief, what load of sorrow bore us down as the 
intelligence came flashing through the electric wire that our good 
President had been shot ! How universal and how deep the gloom ! 

From hoary-headed sire, from prattling child ; matron and 
maid, teacher and taught ; from judge and advocate, pastor and 
physician ; from merchant, mechanic, husbandman, soldier, sailor. 



freedman ; from all ranks, parties, states, and conditions of men ; 
from your own hearts and from mine, went forth exclamations of 
bitter grief, condolence, agony : — ".0 miserable day ! bleed- 
ing country, wounded cruelly in the head of thy beauty ! 
God, have mercy on thy suffering and afflicted people ! The star 
of the nation's diadem is set in blood ; its lustre is extinguished ; 
the gloaming of our burden of sorrow has come ; the face of the 
mighty is shrouded, — and 

" Who from tho shades of gloomy night 
When the last ray of hope is fled, 
Can bid the soul return to light, 

Or break the silent slumber of the dead? " 

It is, gentlemen, a profound personal grief we feel, as when a 
dear old father, a beloved mother, or a brother is torn relentlessly 
from our breast. 

It is not mourning for some great national loss only that veils 
our faces in the shades of woe ; it is lamentation for one who has 
been very near and very dear to us ; for one who seemed to be 
of the immediate circle of our own familiar friends and acquaint- 
ances ; for one who had so identified himself with our own views and 
feelings that he seemed to be an elementary part of our own being, 
— bone of our bone, blood of our blood ; for one so entirely with 
us in sympathy, in genius, in love, in action, in aspiration, that he 
must ever bear the august appellation of the People's own be- 
loved President. Even the httle children looked upon him as 
their own kind-hearted ruler, and they now weep in the sweet simplic- 
ity of childhood over his sacred remains. Yes, gentlemen, as those 
relics are now borne slowly, amid vast and imposing pageantries, 
amid obsequies more sublime than ever honored mausoleum of king 
or conqueror, the httle child, true to the instincts of its loving na- 
ture, steals through the mighty throng and drops its simi}le flower 



6 

and sheds its simple tear of sweet affection beside this good man's 
bier. 

But this flood of national grief is just as natural as the falling 
of the dews of evening, or the tears of Niobe, when we consider 
who and Avhat Abraham Lincoln was, and what his head and heart 
and hand achieved. 

This remarkable man was the son of Mr. Thomas and Nancy 
[Hanks] Lincoln, and was born the 12th day of February, 1809, 
in a rude log cabin in Hardin [now Larue] County, in Kentucky, 
on a small branch of the Rolling Fork, a tributary of the Salt 
river, which empties into the Ohio. 

His grandfather, Abraham, had removed from Rockingham, one 
of the most beautiful counties of the Shenandoah Valley in 
Virginia, to that place as early as 1780 ; he was one of the hardi- 
est and boldest of the frontier settlers, and four years later fell a 
victim to the revenge or cupidity of the aborigines, — leaving a 
widow and five children, — Mordecai, Joseph, Mary [who married 
Ralph Crume], Nancy [who married William Brumfield], and 
Thomas, who, being the youngest son, remained at home with his 
mother. 

Thomas, who was but a mere child when his father removed to 
Kentucky, grew up in the Avilderness, a poor, hard-working, and 
illiterate boy. He was, however, good-natured, kind-hearted, and 
affectionate ; and, on arriving at the age of twenty-seven, he mar- 
ried [180GJ Miss Nancy Hanks, a Virginian by birth, and lived 
in a log cabin, furnished with a deal table, two or three wooden 
stools, wooden plates and spoons, and surrounded by the howling 
wolves and savages of that unexplored and inhospitable region. 

The issue of this marriage was a daughter, who grew up to 
womanhood, was married, and is long since dead ; a son, who died 
in infancy ; and another son, named from his grandfather, Abra- 
liam, who became President of the United States. 



" So from the liumblo vale, fed by the secret springs, 
The palm-tree rises towering toward the sun. 
To hail its morning beam and spread it o'er the land. 



The line of Mr. Lincoln's ancestry has been followed with cer- 
tainty only to his grandfather, Abraham, who was bora in Berks 
County, Pennsylvania, early removed to Virginia, and thence to 
Kentucky, where he was massacred by the Indians in 1784 ; but 
I am most happy to state that there is a very high degree of prob- 
ability that it will be eventually traced to the strong-minded Lin- 
coln family of Massachusetts Bay. This New England stock 
came from Hingham, England, to Hingham in this State, as early 
as 1633-7, and, singular as it may a[)pear, three of them who had 
families bore the name of Thomas, and were designated respective- 
ly as Thomas, the miller, Thomas, the cooper, and Thomas, the 
husbandman. The name of the fourth original settler was Samuel, 
from whom Governor Levi Lincoln and the Honorable Solomon 
Lincoln of this society are descended. The sons of Samuel were 
Daniel, Mordecai, and Thomas. Mordecai Lincoln had a son 
Mordecai, born April 24th, 1686, and another named Abraham, 
born January 13th, 1689. In or about the year 1750, there 
were two Mordecai Lincolns in the town of Taunton, and some of 
the family removed thence into Connecticut. 

Now, by the aid of my friend Mr. Trask, I find from Rupp's 
History of Berks and Lebanon Counties, Pennsylvania, that among 
the taxable inhabitants in Exeter, Berks County, soon after its 
settlement in 1752, were Mordecai and Abraham Lmcoln ; also 
that Mr. Thomas Lincoha was living at Reading, Pennsylvania, as 
early as 1757, and that Mr. Abraham Lincoln was one of the 
Representatives from Berks County in 1782-5, and a member of 
the Convention for the framing of the Pennsylvania State Consti- 
tution of 1789-90. Now, in comparing the names of Massachu- 



8 

setts and the Pennsylvania Lincoln family from which that of 
the President sprung, wo are struck with this remarkable coin- 
cidence, that Mordecai, a very unusual appellation, Abraham, 
Thomas, etc., are constantly occurring in both branches, and we 
can account for it only upon the theory that some members of 
the Massachusetts stock wandered away — it might have been on 
account of quakerism — into Berks County, Pennsylvania, where 
the great-grandfather of our lamented President lived, and that his 
family does thus proceed from the sturdy, brave, and liberty-loving 
Ilingham stock. In corroboration of this point, I would mention 
that that section of Pennsylvania was in part settled by New Eng- 
landers ; that there is a tradition with the Virginia race that they 
came through Berks County from New England, that some biog- 
raphers of the President assert, on what authority I know not, 
that he is of the same blood as General Benjamin Lincoln, born 
in Hingham 1733, and that but one family bearing the name of 
Lincoln is known to have emigrated to this country anterior to the 
revolution. 

The link, however, which connects the two families is still con- 
cealed in the obscurity of the past ; but I hope the piercing glance 
of some genealogist will soon detect it ; for I hold it nobler to claim 
parentage from the honest sons of toil who fled from the insolent 
edicts of the star-chamber to breathe the air of freedom on our 
rock-bound coast, than from the proudest peerage England ever 
saw. 

Bom in the depths of the dreary wilderness, of poor but pious 
parents, our distinguished President was rocked in the cradle of 
adversity, and tried in the crucible of toil, from which he came 
forth a gem, rough and angular to be sure, but shining with 
" purest ray serene " and brighter and brighter unto the perfect 
day. 

Tie was, T beg you to observe, preeminently a self-made "man. 



By the glimmer of the pitch-pine torch, a Httle assistance from his 
noble mother and a backwoodsman by the name of Caleb Hazel, 
he picked out from a dog-eared copy of Dihvorth's spelling-book, 
which had strayed away into those western wilds, the rudiments of 
a very meagre education. 

The volume which he mainly studied was what we call the Book 
of Nature ; and for him its great words were full of eloquence and 
beauty ; its royal illustrations beamed with inexpressible splendor. 
He learned to love betimes the voice of the leaping streamlet, of 
the thunder and the storm. As Daniel Webster, he was fond of 
roaming through the lonely forest ; of driving through the drifting 
snows of winter ; of breasting the tempest and the gale ; of Stand- 
ing front to front with those majestic scenes which God spreads 
out alike for the eye of peasant and of peer, but which the peasant 
has the keener eye to see. His hands were early inured to honest 
toil, and the woodman's axe was the wand of his power until he 
attained the age of manhood. 

This kind of training strengthened mightily his physical system, 
so that in his youth he was, like Washington, the most agile 
swimmer, runner, leaper, in his State. This style of training, also, 
imparted life and freshness to his thought, so that his words were 
always to the point, and marked with laconic power. 

In 1817, the Lincoln family removed across the Ohio River into 
Spencer county, Indiana ; and here young Abraham aided his 
father in erecting a log cabin, in whose narrow loft he rested from 
his daily toil, and read by night his slender stock of books, until 
the age of twenty. The next year his beloved mother died, — 
leaving him her benediction and her Bible ; yes, and that sweet 
and genial temper, that reverence for Almighty God which held 
him to the eternal rule of rectitude, in the solitudes of the wilder- 
ness, on the rough political arena, as amid the blandishments of 
power, and made him a tower of strength, incorruptible, invincible, 
for the salvation of the State. 



10 

So lonely and isolated was the situation of the Lincoln family, 
that nearly a twelvemonth elapsed ere a minister could be found to 
perform funereal rites over that beloved mother's grave ; and what 
a day for that little mourning circle when the good pastor came ! 
The father, Thomas, holding Abraham and his sister by the hand ; 
the Rev. Mr. Elkins standing with them there in the midst of the 
primeval forest, performing solemn service, while the unbidden 
tears are falling, over that solitary grave of Nancy Hanks ! How 
strange the contrast between that evening scene of domestic sorrow 
and the outpouring of a nation's wail as the corse of one of that 
little group is borne to-day from city to city through demonstrations 
of woe unparalleled in the annals of man ! 

"What has caused the contrast ? Those mother's hallowed lips ; 
the training she initiated ; the preparation I am now attempting to 
delineate. 

It is a remark of Sir Walter Scott, in Waverley, that a paucity 
of books is favorable to the development of mental power in boy- 
hood ; and I accept the statement. Mr. Lincoln had and read and 
re-read, until every word was indelibly imprinted on the tablets of 
his memtory, ^sop's Fables, Weems's Life of Washington, and 
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress ; and highly as I respect the ser- 
vices of the caterers for the victims of our modern juvenile lit- 
erature, I most heartily rejoice he had but these three books. 

The incomparable -^sop, reducing the sublimest principles of 
morality, political economy and aesthetics, even, to the slender com- 
prehension of a little child ; the patriotic Weems, by the vivacity 
and glowing fervor of his style, inspiring, as no other man, a lo\ e 
of country and of the father of his country in the breast of youth, 
and the quaint, dramatic Bunyan, prince of allegory, painting 
the golden road to glory just as clear and bright as Jacob saw it 
shining underneath the footsteps of God's angels glancing over it ! 
And was it not some angel's hand that bore such golden bowls of 



11 

milk and honey into that log-cabin loft to nourish the mind of 
Abraham Lincoln from the age of ten to twenty ; — and was it not 
an angel's hand also that kept some other bowls, on which our chil- 
dren sometimes feed and grow up underlings, from reaching it ? 

It is true that young Lincoln in his buckskin clothes and racoon- 
skin cap did pick up a little of Dobell's arithmetic at a log-house 
school, taught by Andrew Crawford, about the time of his father's 
second marriage. It is true, also, that he read " Riley's Narrative," 
and a life of that great Western statesman, Henry Clay ; but the 
literary companions of his daily life were ^sop, Weems, and Bun- 
yan, and could Macaulay himself, think you, have selected better 
for a pioneer boy and a backwoodsman, forty years ago, or even 
now ? It is inspiration that the human spirit needs, and that these 
give. 

Thus feeding his soul with a kind of celestial fire, and ever 
kindling it anew at the same creative shrine, he rose in mental 
power above the heads of those who bend exclusively over ancient 
classic lore, and are content to drink the cups which other lips 
have tasted. 

This nation bears down to the portals of the grave, to-morrow, a 
glorious specimen of a self-made man ; and, say what we will in 
pyaise of college hall and consecrated grove, such have proved to 
be our best made men. 

They are the working men, the practical, business men ; they 
learn by keen experience how the rough board, how the flinty rock, 
the axe, the scythe, the sickle feel ; they know the sharp sensation 
of a blistered hand, a burning tongue ; they come out of dream- 
land into actual contact with this matter of fact land, and they know 
h^ their own quick perceptions the distinction between hot and cold, 
sweet and sour, soft and solid ; — for them the objective world 
stands out in points so clearly cut, so luminous, so palpable, that 
the subjective seizes with unerring grasp the essential and the 



12 

true ; and such men are, therefore, in position to tell, not what 
other men dimly conceive and guess at, but what they themselves do 
actually know. 

The teaching of history is that the alumnus of the alma mater 
must tread his diploma underneath his feet and lay his hand to the 
rugged oar of intellectual labor, if he mean to be of any essen- 
tial service to himself or country. 

As the headlands stand boldly forth along our line of coast to 
resist the dashing and encroachment of the surges of the ocean, so 
the self-made men of America have stood in the fore-front to de- 
fend the nation, and to give it majestic outline, power, and dignity. 
Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and, I 
dare add, Andrew Johnson, testify to the truth of what I say ; and 
if the names of Webster and Everett seem to contravene it, I tell 
you that to all intents and purposes they were self-made men, 
cleaving their way to fame and fortune by reiterated blows of man- 
ly and unshrinking toil. 

Through and through, our honored President was a self-made 
man ; but the business to be transacted in this country demands 
self-made men ; the people love and honor self-made men, for they 
are the efficient, self-relying, quick-thinking and quick-moving men, 
and Mr. Lincoln being such, the people had a most profound re- 
gard and fellow-feeling for him, and hence with no ordinary sor- 
row they deplore his loss, and bitterly feel that a great man has 
fallen. 

At the age of twenty-one, Mr. Lincoln removed with his father's 
f^imily, in an ox-team, to a new settlement in the frontier State of 
Illinois. In company with another man, he cut and split the rails 
for fencing in ten acres of land ; he built a flat-boat and run it 
down to New Orleans, — an exploit in those early times demanding 
enterprise and daring ; he served gallantly as a captain in the fa- 
mous Black Hawk war ; he espoused the protective policy of 



13 

Henry Clay ; set up a country store, and fortunately for his coun- 
try failed in business, and then took up his borrowed commentaries 
for the study of the law. In 1834 he was elected to the State 
legislature, and three years afterwards, removed to Springfield, 
where he commenced the practice of the law in company with the 
late John T. Stewart, Esq. 

But it were quite impossible here to present the record of his 
eventful and romantic life ; to follow him in his struggles against 
poverty ; in his earnest pursuit of knowledge ; his stanch adher- 
ence to principle during his labors as an advocate ; his various 
successes in political life, until he found himself the supreme leader 
of the old Whig party in the State of Illinois, and a member of 
Congress in 1847 ; to mark the first blow he struck against the 
trafiic in human blood, his manly course upon the tariff question, 
the reception of the new territories and the disposition of the public 
lands ; the prominent part he took in the great senatorial contest of 
1858, when, by the force of his powerful argumentation and invec- 
tive, his ready wit, his shrewd and masterly management of the 
whole question at issue, he rose to cope successfully with the lead- 
ing politician of the West, and left an impression of his mental power, 
of his sterling honesty, of his lofty patriotism, never to be ef- 
faced, and which even at that period turned the eyes of the Repub- 
lican party to him as the fitting representative of its policy in the 
presidential chair. It were not possible — and events are so fresh 
in your memories, it is not needful — to follow him through the ex- 
citing scenes which immediately preceded his nomination as chief 
magistrate of the Union ; to trace him in his perilous journey to the 
city of Washington, when the nation was seething, as a vast cal- 
dron, with the elements of sedition ; or in his course during these 
last four years of crime and bloodshed, — so calm, so fair, so dig- 
nified, so just and true, — moving on step by step, intrei)idly, just 



14 

as fast as the country could move ; holding steadily the ground ob- 
tained ; looking for the good of the greatest number ; hushing the 
clamor of the contending factions at the capitol ; calling forth the 
best talent within his reach to solve the mighty problem God had 
given him, and under a storm of obloquy and reproach such as no 
other man ever knew, guiding, with a strong arm, the nation through 
the surges of secession, through the wilderness of doubt and danger ; 
through the baptism of fire, till he himself, like Moses on the sum- 
mit of Mount Pisgah, came to die in the prospect of that promised 
land which Heaven did not permit him, while on earth, to enter. 

You know this mighty record well, for you have journeyed with 
him ; you have drunk with him of the waters of Marah and of the 
smitten rock ; you have seen the pillar of flame ; you have felt 
with him the anguish of defeat, the exultation of victory ; and hence 
you weep to-day as soldiers Aveep when a beloved companion in 
arms sinks by the wayside, leaving them to move along, revolving, 
in the silence of sorrow, sad memories of the departed. 

But let us turn a moment from this outward life, and see what 
Abraham Lincoln, in the structure of his mind and temper, really 
was. Let us go down into the hold of the steamship that so majes- 
tically breasts the stormy floods, and look at the motive power that 
impels it thus triumphantly over them, — bearing it proudly on- 
ward above wreck and disaster to the appointed haven. As every 
man of mark, Mr. Lincoln had sharp, salient points of character, 
standing prominently forth to be read and admired of all men, and 
one of them was that sound and sterling common sense, 

" which only is the gift of Heaven," 

and which led him ever, as by intuition, to the right conclusion. 
He took enlarged and proper views of things ; and while some men 
wore looking into some dark corner of selfishness, his eye swept 
over the whole extended field of action, lie seemed to possess 



15 

that broad range and scope of vision which characterized Edmund 
Burke, and yet with this remarkable breadth of mind, he saw with 
astonishing clearness into the secret of things, grasped at once the 
whj and wherefore of any question, and struck the knot of any diffi- 
culty right upon the head. He saw intuitively just what men and 
things were good for ; he had the skill to use them as he wanted 
them, and this, I think, is one of the chief secrets of executive 
power. 

I never knew a more close and shrewd observer of human life 
than our lamented President. He had the New England knack of 
guessing at the truth, — of guessing right ; and so his guess was a 
prophetic omen. 

It was by looking at things in the sunshine of this native, pre- 
scient, sterling common sense, that he came to lay his hand upon 
the heart of this nation, as the skilful player upon the strings of his 
instrument, and to make the discordant elements blend harmoniously 
for the perpetuation of the Union. It was by this celestial ray 
that he was able to hold fast to the " golden mean," curbing the 
spirit of the ultras upon either side and drawing them in skilfully 
to strengthen the current and bear away the obstructions which 
they themselves had raised. It was by this God-given cifulgence 
that he saw the magnitude of the question at stake ; the cause and 
the tendency of the tremendous national agitation, and issued, when 
the right time came, and not till the right time came, that procla- 
mation of freedom which stamps his administration as the most illus- 
trious of them all ; and sets up a landmark in the progress of the 
nations more magnificent than that of Magna Charta at old Runny- 
mede. 

Mr. Lincoln was strictly honest in his dealings with his fellow- 
men. I do not think he ever wronged a man of a single dollar in 
his life. His word was as good as his bond ; you saw it in every 
lineament of his benignant features. He stood u] right in the 



lU 

integrity of an honest heart through the criminations and recrimina- 
tions of the sharpest poUtical strife ; and never was any sobriquet 
more fairly won than that of Honest Old Abe. — 

"His was the celestial beauty 
Of 3 soul that does its duty;" 

and in an age of political and commercial huckstering and chican- 
ery, when we were swinging fast away into bankruptcy of national 
and mercantile faith, it was of Heaven's high mercy thus to set 
him up as a granite buttress of honesty to turn the tide. 

Mr. Lincoln loved the truth, and lived it spotlessly ; his words, 
his deeds are pure as virgin gold, and this in times liLe Jiese is 
loftiest virtue, far outshining any splendor of commanding intellect. 
Through the darkest, gloomiest storm of this unnatural rebellion, 
his honesty was — 

'* Still an unmoved rock, 
Washed whiter, but not shaken by the shock ; 
His heart conceived no sinister device ; 
Fearless he played with fianifs and trod on ice;" 

and this is why he was so profoundly loved by the American peo- 
ple, — et extinctus amabitur idem. 

Our lamented chief magistrate was a man of great Republican 
simplicity. In his mode of dress and address he was as unaffected 
and as simple as the ancient Cincinnatus. In this he was a fitting 
representative of what our nation was in the times of the sage 
Franklin ; the plain and sensible John Adams ; of the other un- 
pretending fathers of the revolution, and of what it ought to be 
to-dfi-ji. 

He assumed no French airs ; he followed no foreign fashions ; 
he did not forget, he did not wish to forget, his humble origin. He 
went about his business at the White House just as one of the 



17 

people ; he shook you cordially by the hand as one of the people. 
He conversed with you frankly, without any pretension or parade ; 
he sympathized with you as a kind and generous friend ; and this 
is another reason why your tears flow forth so freely over his re- 
mains, since the large-hearted forever stir, by some angelic power, 
responsive chords in other noble hearts ; and this leads me to assert 
that our beloved President was a man of the finest, tenderest sym- 
pathies. His head was a " fountain of tears " for those in dis- 
tress. His private, his public, life was luminous, all over, as the 
starry firmament, with deeds of charity ; with touching instances 
of kind consideration for the poor and the unfortunate. 

One ^f tjie last acts of his life was to send a sum of money to 
assist the patriot Petigru of Charleston, in the sad reverses he had 
met in that hot-bed of secession for adhering steadily to the prin- 
ciples of the Union. 

His sympathies extended to the little children, — to the bond- 
man, — to the misguided and the wounded rebel. 

On one of his reception days, three little girls in plain attire, 
the daughters of a mechanic, came in to look at him, but fearing 
to approach him, were moving around him at a distance in the 
crowd, when he, observing them, in his cordial way exclaimed : 
" What, little gu-ls, are you going to pass me without shaking 
hands ? " and taking them up in his arms, as the Good Shepherd 
of old, he tenderly bestowed on them his blessing, while many eyes 
were moistening at the touching beauty of the scene. 

At another time, some one saw him counting over a pile of 
" greenbacks," when, looking up and smiling, he observed : " This 
may seem rather out of jDlace for me ; but the truth is, a poor old 
negro, having the small-pox at the hospital, and not able to » .'ite 
his name, has found it difficult to draw his pay, a d I have 
taken some Uttle pains to get his money for him." 

Will not that simple deed shine beautifully down through the un- 



18 

born generations ? Does it not send up a little radiance to the eye 
of liim who said, " In as much as ye have done it unto one of 
these, the least of my disciples, ye have done it unto me ? " 

His heart, though mighty as a lion's, was full of the milk of 
human kindness ; his golden charities, as the perfume of the 
sandal wood, flowed out even upon the axe that was cutting his 
life away ; and perhaps no man ever revealed more of the spirit of 
that touching verse of a beloved poet of our own society, — 



" A little word in kindness spoken, 
A motion or a tear, 
Has often healed the heart that's broken, 
And made a friend sincere." 



He had a great, loving, generous heart, and his actions come 
to us as sunbeams through the cloud of war ; they enshrine him 
eternally in the deepest chambers of the soul of his country. 

The man whose honored relics are to be deposited in the tomb 
to-morrow was, in the best and broadest sense of the word, tem- 
perate. He held command over his own spirit. He reverenced 
the soul which God had given him, and the temple in which it 
dwelt. He looked not upon the wine when it was red. 

A wager once was laid that he could not lift a barrel of whiskey. 
He bent his athletic frame and raised the cask containing forty 
gallons to his lips, and filled his mouth with the intoxicating 
draught, when some one standing by, cried out, " Well, that is 
the first time, Abraham, I have ever seen you swallow a drop of whis- 
key." " And, you have not seen me swallow it now," rejoined 
the sturdy son of temperance, at the same time throwing the 
burning liquid from his mouth. " Nor," says the writer, many 
years later, " have I known of Mr. Lincoln's drinking any sj^ir- 
ituous liquor since." 

Though exposed to the temptations of a great and dissolute cap- 



19 



ital, our Executive Head kept himself pure and unspotted from the 
world ; so that his enemy, even, could say, " Mr. Lincoln has no 
vices." 

Our Chief jNIagistrate was a man of indomitable industry. His 
days and nights were consecrated to intense intellectual labor ; 
whatever he undertook to do, he finished. His mind was a tem- 
pest till he understood the question he was studying, and could see 
entirely round and through it. He learned to cut away intellect- 
ual difficulties as with axe he felled the forest in his boyhood. 

" I remember," says ^Ir. Lincoln, " how, when a mere child, I used to get 
irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not undorstnnd. I 
don't think I ever got angry at anything else in my life. I can remember 
going to my little bedroom after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening 
with my father, and spending no small part of the night in walking up and 
down, and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, 
to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, though I often tried to, when I got 
on such a hunt after an idea, until I had caught it ; and when I thought I had 
got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over, until I had 
put it in language plain enough for anybody to comprehend. This was a 
kind of passion with me, and it has since stuck by me, for I am never easy 
now when I am handling a thought till I have bounded it north, and 
bounded it south, and bounded it east, and bounded it west." 

Here is a course of intellectual education superior to anything 
set forth in the works of Milton, Locke, Fenelon, or Rousseau, — 
giving the mind mastery of itself and its possessions, and the abil- 
ity to settle questions of the highest moment on the basis of 
eternal truth. Mr. Lincoln says, again : — 

" In the course of my law-reading I constantly came upon the word dem- 
onstrate. I said to myself, ' What do I mean when I demonstrate, more than 
when I reason or prove ? How does demonstration differ from any other 
proof? ' I consulted Webster's Dictionary ; that told of ' certain proof; ' but 
I could form no idea what sort of proof that was. I thought a great many 



20 

things were proved beyond a possibility of a doubt without recourse to any 
such extraordinary process of reasoning as I thought demonstration to be. 
You might as well have defined blue to a blind man. At last I said : ' Lin- 
coln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demon- 
strate means;' and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my 
father's house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six 
books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what demonstration means, and 
went back to my law studies." 

What a severe and self-denying discipline ! What an admirable 
preparation for meeting his political opponents and grasping log- 
ically the great partisan questions of the day ! So William Pitt 
braced up his thought, by reading Euclid, for his gigantic eflforts in 
the British Parliament ; so Abraham Lincoln came to the success- 
ful demonstration of the mighty theorem of a nation saved and 
strengthened by emancipation ! 

Thus, through the full development of the physical system, a na- 
tive good sense, unimpeachable integrity, the culture of the socia 
affections, simplicity in living, the perusal of a few books of sterling 
character,* and the constant collision with some of the strongest 
minds of the West, Mr. Lincoln came at length to be a man of 
commanding intellectual ability. I may not have your quick re- 
sponse to this ; but still I must maintain that we are now holding 
obsequies over a man of transcendent mental power. 

He was very plain and unpretending, to be sure ; but he was 
keen, sagacious as Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton to 
discern the real " status " of a case, and sound to the core in 
logic and in argumentation. Some of his speeches, and especially 
his last inaugural, are perfect masterpieces. Some of his sen- 
tences are Demosthenic ; they come like solid shot from the Golum- 



• Mr. Lincoln's favorite author in later life was Sliakspeare. Macbeth and Hamlet 
iifforded him intense delight. 



21 

biad. His wit was keen and trenchant as a Damascus blade ; and 
though he might not have possessed the graces, he had the power 
of oratory ; and that is the main thing, after all. The ring of elo- 
quence was in him, and when you heard, you felt. 

He stated his point with absolute precision ; he kept to it with 
unflinching pertinacity ; and his excellent judgment, his apt illus- 
trations, his racy anecdotes, his downright honesty and invariable 
good-humor, enchained the attention of the popular assembly and 
produced conviction. His official papers have, I know, been keenly 
criticised ; but to my mind they are among the very best that ever 
emanated from the White House. They are the honest transcript 
of his thought ; they tell in plainest language just exactly what 
he means to tell, so that the public cannot fail to understand him. 
They mark out with masterly hand just what is to be done ; and if 
state papers are not written for this, then I ask what you would 
have them written for ? I know the English have often sneer- 
ingly spoken of Mr. Lincoln as a man of ordinary, if not inferior, 
ability, and some men at home have echoed this opinion ; but to 
express contempt is one thing, — to work out an immortal name is 
quite another. 

Could any man of common ability, think you, have raised him- 
self through the sharp struggles of the strong-minded politicians of 
Illinois from a log hut to a seat in our national Congress ? Could 
a man of ordinary talents have met and discomfited in seven intel- 
lectual battles in open field such a giant as Judge Douglas? 
Could any man of low mental energy have penned such an inaugural 
address as that of Mr. Lincoln when he took thje helm of state ? 
Could 'any man of no marked intellectual power have grasped 
that helm as he did in 1861 ; with treason, as the guns upon the 
Light Brigade at Balaclava, in front of him, treason to the right 
of him, treason to the left of him, and treason to the rear of him ; 
with the military power in the hands of the rebellion ; with no 



22 

army or munitions of war ; with no well-trained generals ; with no 
navy at his command ; with everything in tumult and disorder7 
with mutiny itself on the quarter-deck ; — could any man without 
ability have taken the crazy old ship of state, at such a time, swung 
out upon the breakers and the quicksands, and have piloted her 
through the rocks of secession, — the Scylla and Charybdis of the 
political parties, amid the clashing of ten thousand counter- currents 
of opinion, along beneath the storm and thunder-bolts of such a war 
as we have had ; holding the kings abroad and the rebels at home 
at bay, and keeping such a bark in such a sea from foundering ? 

Do you believe it ? Could a man of any inferior mental force 
have so built up such an army ; so sustained the public confidence 
and credit ; so cut up the roots of human slavery ; bringing on step 
by step the dawn of freedom's glorious day ; silencing by masterly 
strokes of policy the tongue of calumny ; breaking up the very den 
of rebellion ; out-mastering the master of rebellion ; leading what 
we called a " ruined country," as William the Silent led the 
United States of Netherlands, out of the wilderness ; resisting 
slave-power as that William resisted the Inquisition ; breaking up 
slave-power as God broke up the pride of the Egyptians in the 
ruby sea ; — could any man of second-rate ability have executed 
that ? There is not another man, I do believe, upon the face of 
this fair globe that could have done it ; and when you say that a 
great man, a prince in Israel, has not fallen, I tell you that you do 
not understand the magnitude of the work that has been achieved, 
the peril from which this Union has been rescued, or what it is to 
settle a question that has bafHed the skill of ablest statesmen for a 
century, or to meet the expectations of the advocates of Freedom, 
and demonstrate to the world that " still she lives." 

Our deceased President was a true patriot. He loved his coun- 
try with intense affection ; he wept over it in its bleeding struggles ; 
he bravely did his best to avert the bloodshed, and when it came, 



I 



23 

he would have sacrificed his life at any time to have stayed it. He 
loved the honored names of the patriots of the revolution ; he loved 
the soldier, — he shook his hand with thrilling interest, and when he 
saw him sick or wounded, the fountain of his tears was opened and 
he did what could be done for his relief. In view of the unceasing, 
self-denying labors of woman to assuage the sorrows of war, he 
once in the fulness of his heart observed : "If all that has been 
said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise 
of woman were applied to the women of America, it would not do 
them justice for their conduct during this war." 

Yes, he was a true patriot, — your tears confess it. He loved the 
Union ; tasked the whole energy of his noble soul to save it : he 
HAS saved it. The flag floats low indeed, but proudly over it ; and 
so we calmly and trustfully breathe above his grave ; — requiescat 

IN PACEM. 

" With conquerless will 
He has climbed from the base to the top of the hill ; 
Undaunted in peril, unwavering in strife, 
He has fought a good fight in the battle of life; 
He has been our warm friend in woe and in weal ; 
Just as firm as the rock and as true as the steel ; " — 

and if to befriend the widow and the fatherless ; if to love judg- 
ment and follow mercy ; if to live soberly and honor the truth ; if 
to devote our talents sacredly to the service of our fellow-men ; if 
to cherish a forgiving temper, — to bless our enemies ; if to save a 
bleeding country and to let the oppressed go free ; if to take daily 
counsel of God and to acknowledge his Son Jesus Christ to be our 
Saviour, — entitle us to indulgence in the audit- chamber of the Al- 
mighty Sovereign, may we not hope that he, whom we deplore, has 
joined the illustrious ones of the eternal city, and beholds the com- 
plete demonstration of that principle of love by which his course 
below Avas guided ? 

Thus, gentlemen, I have endeavored to touch upon the leading 



24 

cliaracterlstics of our beloved Ruler, over whom, pale, cold, speech- 
less as the monumental marble, this nation now is weeping, and for 
whose loss it will indeed more bitterly weep as it comes more and 
more to realize the immense debt of gratitude we owe to him. 
What tongue, think you, can tell it ? We are indebted to him for 
the worth of a consistent example in private and public life, — for 
some of the noblest sentiments of humanity ever spoken ; we are 
indebted to him for the rescue of our bleeding country from the 
clutches of the most foul revolt this world has ever seen, and for 
leading us through fire and blood to a high position as a people ; 
we are under obligations to Abraham Lincoln for setting up our 
shattered fortunes at home and abroad, — for uniting the bonds of 
the broken Union, and for making them ten times mightier than 
before, — for casting out the evil spirit of the nation, — for opening 
the preliminaries for a permanent peace, because based on the prin- 
ciples of humanity, and for inaugurating a career of unexampled 
civil strength and prosperity. 

We are indebted to him for making that word " Yankee " ever- 
lastingly honorable. 

Shall we not, then, drop a few garlands of praise ; shall we not, 
then, shed a few drops of kindly sympathy ; shall we not chant a 
few mournful dirges over his consecrated grave ? 

Yes, thou noble scion of the tree of Liberty, — honored outgrowth 
of our Republican institutions ; yes, thou representative man of 
modern times, bright as the star of morning in thy genius, temper, 
integrity, honor, patriotism ; yes, thou peerless pioneer in the 
cause of human freedom, — thou conqueror of thine enemies by 
the power of goodness ; thy name shall be embalmed in the most 
sacred cells of our grateful memories ; it shall glow serenely in the 
constellation of the worthies of thy native land, unobscured by that 
of the immortal Washington ! Yes, thou martyr, sealing thy love 



25 

of freedom by thy blood ; the rallying cry henceforth shall be, — 
"Washington the Father, Lincoln the Saviour, of our country! " 

" While kingdoms crumble, old and hoary, 
In a world whoro all is transitory, 
These names shall ever shino, twin stars of glory. 
With undimmed splendor in our nation's story." 

But let the martyr sleep. His mission is accomplished ; and, 
because of his departure, there remains the more for us to do. As 
he himself once said above the braves of Gettysburg : " It is for us 
the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work thus far 
so nobly carried on ; it is rather for ^g * * * that we here highly 
resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain ; that the nation 
shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the govern- 
ment of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish 
from the earth." And could those silent lips still move again, the 
words, I think, to us would be : " Maintain the heritage which the 
God of your fathers has intrusted to your hands ; love justice, 
show mercy, relieve the oppressed, march on manfully to possess 
the land before you: I have led you to the borders, — have pointed 
you to a Joshua, who will lead you in triumphantly. The deep 
water-floods are murmuring still ; but the Lord God omnipotent 
reigneth ; his bow is in the cloud ; the returning dove admonishes 
you that the deluge of his wrath is subsiding ; the signs of your 
manifest destiny are in the heavens ; and out of the deeps of liis 
jirovidencc God is calling you to fulfil his purposes of mercy. 
Weep not for me, but, with undaunted front, move on to execute 
the mandates of the Almighty, to build up the temple of freedom, 
along whose massive walls shall be written, ' Salvation,' and over 
its golden portals, ' Praise.' " 

4 



26 



Arkangements were made with Hon. Henry Wilson to furnish the 
exceedingly interesting eulogy delivered by him at the same meeting ; 
but he was suddenly called to Washington, rendering it impossible for 
him to provide a copy : it is therefore omitted. Below will be ibund 
a short abstract from the Boston " Evening Transcript " of May 5th, 
18G5: — 

" Hon. Henry Wilson followed in a brief eulogy. He corroborated, from 
personal observation and intercourse with the late President, many of the 
traits of character that Rev. Mr. Nason bad dwelt upon. The nation, he 
thought, had failed to comprehend fully the character of Abraham Lincoln in 
all its proportions; but now that he had suddenly fallen, in the moment of 
crowning victory, the people were beginning to do justice to their lost leader. 
He would pass into history as the foremost man of the age. Mr. Lincoln 
was a genuine product of our Democratic institutions, and had a living faith 
in their permanency. His sympathy for the poor and oppressed was hearty 
and genuine. Of his mind, one characteristic was the power of stating an 
argument clearly, and of quickly detecting a fallacy. He had also a felicity 
of expression. There were many phases of power and beauty in his letters 
and s|)eeches. The speech at Gettysburg was instanced as containing some 
of the noblest utterances of any £ige." 



•27 



Ch Wxmnl of ^Itrraljitm ITmcofn. 



READ UEFOBE THE SOCIETY. 



' 1 would save the Uuiou, and I would sayo it in the shortest way under the Constitution."' 

President Lincoln . 

Long and loud is the People's wail. 
From city and village, hill and dale ; 
The crowded street is draped in woe, 
The half-mast (lag is droojiing low. 
As the sad cortege winds atar 
From State to State with funeral car, 
Like an Eclipse which veils the sky, 
So solemn is the obsequy. 

f 
Do tears like these, so freely shed, 
Hallow some royal chieftain dead. 
Or mourn we boundless wealth or power, 
That lived the wonder of an hour ? 
Ah ! no. His were no blazoned arms, 
Nor dazzling, intellectual charms ; 
But, who in Fame's proud path can find 
Such moral grandeur of the mind? 

Like Israel's king, by unseen Hand 
Raised to restore a bleeding land. 
In darkest hour he looked to Gotl, 
Alone the path of duty trod, 
Saw the poor slave foi-ever free. 
Then, martyred, fell in victory. 
Alas ! And do the avenging skies 
Demand such noble sacrifice ? 



28 

Aloft the Stars on Sumter waved, 
The Battle o'er — the Union saved, 
And songs of Peace his bosom stirred, 
Songs, such as Judah's hills once heard, 
When, as he saw the end of strife, 
He sealed his Mission with his life ; 
His salary chose the better pai't, 
His goodness won a Nation's heart. 

I. H. S. 



LB S'I2 



